They're remarkably vicious. The lengths they are going to to try to convince me that my wife is lying to me are... creative. The lengths they're going to to lie about the licensing board and California law are... well, let's say mercenary.

It's conceivable that they're even right, though I'm getting *really* tempted to go to the trouble of trying to get their license revoked. Because *man* do I not want anybody else to have to deal with them.

However, I'm going to need to get through this negotiation with them first. Because *man* do I not want to do this *without* the leverage of trying to get their license revoked.

Not that they're doing a damn thing for me at the moment, of course.

To be fair, the lady involved (Katherine? Kathleen? Something like that) *did* eventually play me a recording of Krissy saying she didn't want an inspection, obviously *well* after the thoroughly botched installation had occurred, something like, "ma'am, we can schedule an inspection", "I don't want an inspection, just take out the god damn water heater!"

Oy.

On the plus side, one way or another, I'm pretty sure we'll be done with the labor-intensive parts of dealing with this within a few days.

Then it's just a matter of whether we pay several thousand dollars for a hideously botched job and completely inappropriate water heater or not. But I think we'll only be dealing with American Express on that one. It's possible that American Express also employs some unpleasant people, but so far we've done pretty well with the customer service folk.

Realistically, they can't just take the water heater back. Then they'd have effectively already conceded the argument with American Express in our favor. They're impressively unpleasant in doing so, though, which is a pretty good sign that that's their real weapon, such as it is. But I'm me, and I had to offer. I don't actually want to steal the parts they brought. I just don't want to pay for worse-than-useless labor. I paid rather a *lot* for them to significantly reduce the value of my home.

I'm always impressed with people as mercenary as the lady in question. She was awful, fussy, made imprecations about my wife and our character, talked about how we didn't have a prayer, and then when it was clear that she wasn't going to make any financial progress with me this morning, got me quickly and efficiently off the phone. I have trouble imagining being so thoroughly aggressive, nasty and unpleasant, lying and cheating for a living, and then just turning it off with a switch. The woman's got talent.